CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and subject of HBO award-winning documentary “True Justice” — Bryan Stevenson — is one of three national luminaries who will be awarded a 2025 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal next month. As founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Birmingham, AL, they have won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row inmates, confronting incarceration and abuse of mentally ill, and children prosecuted as adults.

Walter J. Hood, a multidisciplinary designer from Charlotte, North Carolina, is globally recognized for his contributions in art, landscape architecture, urbanism and research will get the award in Architecture. And Edwin S. Kneedler, a 1974 UVA School of Law graduate, has served as a U.S. deputy solicitor general more than three decades in a career that has spanned 10 presidential administrations receives the award in law. All will speak at different times at different venues on Founders Day April 11, and you can click here for all the information.